And Now for Something Completely Different
by chrissie0707
Summary: Written for the spn summergen fic exchange on LJ. Prompt: What if the last two years were all a part of the djinn's unreality? AU.


Big thanks to everybetty for the beta!

* * *

_And Now for Something Completely Different_

The jerk back is a violent sensory overload, a nauseating swirl of colors he can't isolate or focus on, and he's not sure if it's him or the room that's spinning but his feet are no longer under him. One inhale brings with it the stench of sulfur, blood, and something vaguely chemical and the next is laced with rot, sewage and the honeysuckle sweetness of decomposing flesh. He coughs, or gags, or both. Everything settles except the pounding in his head, and there is only black.

Like he's been dropped from a great height, Dean finds himself sprawled on the floor, vision splotchy as though he's been repeatedly subjected to a flashbulb or whacked in the back of the head. It's a fairly familiar sensation. He is numb all over, can't move a muscle, blood pounding so loudly in his head he can't hear too well, either. He catches the warbled bass of a voice fading in and out but it's like Charlie Brown's teacher: _Wah wah wah. _He has no idea what the voice is saying.

Dean doesn't know where he is or what the hell is going on, but it suddenly registers the voice booming so close to his face must belong to Sam. He can't actually see him yet but knows he's there because Sam is always all HANDS.

_Stop it, Sammy, _Dean growls in his mind because he doesn't quite trust his mouth yet.

"- ean! DEAN! Say something!"

_Sam?_ Dean gives it a try, thinks his mouth moves but isn't sure any sound comes out.

"Dean!" There are the hands again. Sam seems to think shaking the shit out of him is the way to approach the situation, and Dean responds by nearly hurling on what he hopes to be Sam's shoes.

"What the – " Dean struggles to sit up, fails horribly and falls back, his elbows connecting with a hard concrete floor that feels dirtier, grimier than it should, if he's remembering things correctly. Suddenly, he's not so sure he is. "What the hell is going on? Did -" The second question is lost in a brutal brain rush of _WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING._

The hands are gone but the harsh flare of light in front of his face is like a jackhammer to the temple. Dean's reflexes take over and the flashlight goes flying out of Sam's hand. It clatters away and bounces off a wall before rolling to a rest, beam shining on the pair of them from a few feet away. "Sorry, I didn't mean to…I'm just trying to check you out."

Dean sees his brother for the first time. Sam's staring wide-eyed at the fallen flashlight, holding his hands up in front of his chest like Dean has a gun. He kind of wishes he did because what. The. FUCK. And then…_Wish?_

Dean's becoming aware of things a little at a time, like the sting and tickle in the side of his neck. He presses his palm to the spot with a hiss. The skin there is tender and hot to the touch, coated in something he has a feeling is blood. "What the hell," he repeats hoarsely, "is going on?"

Sam looks just as clueless as Dean feels, but it can't possibly be for the same reasons. "It was the djinn," he says, eyebrows pulled together. That's his 'Dean, you should know this' look.

Dean's heart jumps and he looks left and right, not recognizing anything in the faint light but shapes looking disturbingly like bodies. He remembers…he thinks he should be in a church. This is NOT a church. He and Sam seem to be in a warehouse or a basement. Wherever they are, it's cold and drippy and certainly doesn't smell like anything LIVING has been living here in awhile. _Wait…wish. Wish? _"The what?"

Dean scoots back away from Sam before he can answer, bumps into something cool but light that gives and clatters to the floor next to him. He startles and the thin metal stand rolls to a stop against his leg, a nearly full bag of blood hooked to the top, busted from the fall and pooling slowly. He watches dumbly as its contents creep closer to his splayed hand, breaths coming quick and uneven, worsening with each pull.

It's as if someone has put a plastic bag over his head. Things go fuzzy again and Dean finds he can't breathe at all and nothing, nothing, NOTHING is right here. His thoughts are racing – a stuttered filmstrip across his vision like he's really fucking drunk. _This already…SOMETHING like this already happened. _He's seeing things he suddenly remembers very vividly but hopes to high hell are nothing more than remnants of a really horrible nightmare.

It must show on his face because Sam leans in closer, interrupting the pictures, and grabs Dean's hand just before the blood – HIS blood – reaches it. "You're in shock." He looks scared. He also looks younger than Dean thinks he should, and he stares at Sam's face. The way Sam stares back, eyes wide, brows so high they're hiding in his not-long-enough hair, makes him think he might be saying these things out loud.

Sam grips his arm and attempts to drag him to his feet but Dean wriggles away, or tries to. Sam gets him about halfway there before Dean can verbalize anything coherent. "No. No, Sam," he says, fingers digging into Sam's shoulder. "We, I killed the djinn over two years ago." _This isn't right. Nothing is right._

At that, Sam releases Dean and he unsteadily drops back to the floor. He catches himself on his palms, landing and slipping in the growing puddle of his own stolen blood.

"Shit, Dean, sorry." Sam recovers, hauls Dean fully upright and grabs his shoulders, biting his lip as Dean stares at his bloody hands. "Okay," Sam says slowly. "I think it's time for the emergency room now." And then he drags Dean past the body of the djinn, knife sticking out of its chest, dead only a few minutes.

* * *

He doesn't know how they got here but suddenly Dean realizes they're in the car and the car is moving really fucking fast. Sam's not allowed to drive this car this fast and he knows it, which means one of two things: Sam is driving towards a hospital or away from the police. _Or away from the devil. _Or maybe he's just scared. The one thing Dean's sure of is he's going to be sick. "Pull over."

Sam takes one look at Dean's face and does what he says. Dean's already pawing at the door handle before the car is off of the pavement.

Dean heaves as things come back. Bullets, demons, hellhounds, blood, angels, devils, HELL. He throws up what feels like every organ and ounce of liquid a human body can possibly house. When he finally pulls back into the car he bumps into Sam, so close he must have been hovering directly over Dean's shoulders.

Sam is so SAM, always with the hands and shoving a bottle of water in his face, muttering words Dean isn't lucid enough to understand. He doesn't even know if Sam's talking to _him,_ or just talking, as he does have a tendency to do the angry ranting thing. Dean takes a sip of the water and regrets it. The water is disgustingly warm and must have been in the car for days, rolling around under the bench seat. Still, it's better than the taste in his mouth so he takes another drink, swirls it around, and spits out the open door.

Once Sam is back on his side of the car Dean leans his head against the seat and closes his eyes, letting the hand with the plastic bottle fall to his side. This has to be a dream. Has to be a trick. Not that he isn't grateful for the save, considering Hell itself was opening up right before his eyes, but THIS…this is overkill. "You do this, Cas?" he whispers thickly.

Some time passes; his eyelids are like anvils but Dean pries them open and he's with it enough to know this time the car ISN'T moving. He rolls his head to blink at Sammy, who's watching him with that squinty-eyed concern as an eighteen-wheeler blows past them and rocks the car. "You're scaring me, Dean."

He looks like he's waiting for Dean to do…something. So Dean swallows roughly and says "Where are we going?"

* * *

Hospital. That's where they're going. Of course, Sam's just stupid enough to actually SAY that's where they're going and Dean bucks. He tells Sam no fucking way and I'm fine and just take me to the motel and Sam, please. The last is the one that makes Sam cave. Somehow this feels worse than the crash, worse than the coma. Dean is in the worst shape Sam's ever seen him, because even disjointed spirit Dean was DEAN and making some sense.

Dean's talking and doesn't even seem to realize, whispering about people and things Sam doesn't recognize or remember. And really, what the hell did he expect? He KNEW this is what the djiin does, and it's still scaring the shit out of him. He wants Dean to be back together as quickly as possible, wants it to be like this never happened. Sam is scared and concerned, but he's selfish and young and he's not used to so literally having to hold Dean up. It's supposed to be the other way around, so he caves.

Sam gets Dean back to the motel and spends fifteen minutes watching his brother puke his guts out. Well, not so much watching as standing on the other side of the closed bathroom door, _listening _to his brother puke his guts out. He wouldn't think Dean had anything left in him at this point. Sam leans heavily against the door frame as he waits for Dean to resurface. He's been awake for nearly twenty-four hours, adrenalin and his fear for Dean the only reasons he's on his feet.

When the toilet flushes for a fourth time Sam puts a hand on the door. "Dean? You've gotta come out of there. That djinn had you all night and you've lost a lot a blood and I need to – "

The door jerks open suddenly under Sam's hand, catching him off-balance.

Dean's eyes are exhausted and bloodshot, his face drawn but scrubbed and scoured red. A bandage from the first aid box is taped over the hole in his neck, also scrubbed clean. "All night, huh?" he says, an edge in his rough voice.

Without meeting Sam's eyes, Dean crosses the room and sits on his bed, propping an elbow on his thigh and putting a hand to his forehead. Sam stays on the other side of the room, leaning against the wall next to the bathroom door. Dean looks like he could use the space.

"The girl?" Dean asks, in a way that sounds like he already knows the answer.

"When did you –" Sam realizes that, given the circumstances, maybe he shouldn't ask. "She didn't make it," he says quietly. "She was dead when I got there. Had been for a couple of hours."

Dean doesn't move. "Damn it."

"Dean – "

"_Damn it._"

Dean sits that way, head in his hand, for what feels like hours. Sam checks his watch as time slowly creeps toward morning. He just watches, feeling pathetic, not knowing what to do or say. He just knows he can't watch his brother like this. "Can I…get you anything?" What can he possibly do for Dean right now? He has no idea what Dean experienced in his head as a result of the djinn, no idea what's going on in his head now.

Dean shakes that head slowly but doesn't look up.

Sam knows he could usually coerce, or at least annoy, Dean into telling him what he's thinking. Not now. All he can do is wait for Dean to talk to him.

* * *

Dean guesses at some point he must have been aware enough to know what was really going on, that there was something wrong. The djinn's power over its victims comes from keeping them content in some kind of version of their own perfect world. The damn thing had used his coherency against him and it had worked. At some point, Dean's focus had moved from thoughts of Mom and Home to Rescue and the REAL Sam – a laughable thought now – and things just snowballed from there.

He can't imagine having to do it all over again. Having to make that deal and save Sam and kill the demon and deal with all that Ruby and Bela bullshit and…

_Wait._

* * *

Dean's head snaps up and he looks around the room, eyes searching wildly.

_Well, that didn't take long. _Sam straightens and takes a step forward. "Dean, what's going on? What's wrong?" _Stupid question._

"Where's my phone?"

"Oh." Sam pulls the phone from his own jacket pocket. "Found it on the floor in the…back there."

Dean holds his hand out impatiently. "I gotta call Bobby."

Sam holds onto the phone. "Dean, whatever it is, it can wait. You…well, you're clearly not well. You lost a lot of blood, and – "

"Sam." Dean heaves himself up from the bed. His limbs are unsteady but the dark look in his eyes isn't. "I need to call Bobby."

Sam caves again, and Bobby answers on the fourth ring.

"Bobby, hey." Dean's voice is uncharacteristically shaky. "No, nothing's wrong. Why? I don't…" Dean sneaks a look at his watch and seems surprised by the hour. "Sorry, I didn't realize. Didn't actually know what time it is." He listens for a moment, wincing. "Look, I'll explain everything later, I just need to know if you recognize a name. Bela Talbot."

_Who? _Sam frowns and watches Dean's face.

It's unreadable. No reaction to Bobby's response, no indication of the answer he's looking for. "Yeah. Yeah, Bobby. Thanks." He disconnects the call and stares at the phone.

Sam gives it five minutes, counts it off on the ticks of his watch. "He ever hear of her?"

"No."

When it doesn't appear he's going to elaborate, Sam prods. "Who is she?"

Dean laughs and it sounds strange, it doesn't sound like Dean. "Nobody."

"Dean – "

"Literally, Sam." Dean meets his eyes for the first time since they got back to the motel and it hits Sam: Dean doesn't even LOOK like Dean. He looks too old. "She's no one."

* * *

Dean's still – _finally_ – asleep when Sam wakes up around eleven but he has no intention of waking him. It's obvious from the lines in Dean's face the sleep is anything but peaceful. Sam had a hard enough time getting some sleep, himself. He gets showered, dressed, and goes for good coffee and doughnuts, getting some for Dean just in case.

Dean's bed is empty and the bathroom door shut when he gets back to the room. Sam sets the paper bag and Dean's coffee on the table and takes a sip of his own. He picks up the remote control and moves to turn on the television when he's drawn to the bathroom by sounds of retching.

Sam's stomach drops and the coffee cup lands heavily and hollowly on the table top. He'd somehow thought things would be normal in the morning. Dean's like a rubber band; he just snaps back into shape. _Stupid._ "Dean?"

"M'fine, Sa – I'm fine."

The hesitation isn't lost on Sam, but that doesn't mean he understands it.

* * *

It doesn't hit him until he's stepping out of the shower.

He remembers last night.

Dean remembers Sam and the djinn and rescue. Just because he remembers it doesn't mean it happened, and that's causing a lot of problems in his head, because he also remembers another last night. Seals and angels and Sam kicking his ass and Lucifer rising from under his feet. Things are already starting to get jumbled. The realization that nothing he's been through the past two years has actually happened is both exhilarating and horrifying, and it's proving to be hell on his stomach.

"Dean?"

"M'fine, Sa – " Dean swallows back acid along with the name. Damn. He didn't even hear the door shut. "I'm fine." He's not fine. He's really, really not fine. He has no idea what's real and what's just a fabrication of his mind. If the djinn tricked him once, who's to say it couldn't have done it again? Maybe this Sam isn't really Sam, either.

The one physical certainty is that, real or not, Dean has memories of Sam that are considerably less than pleasant. An image of his baby brother sucking down demon blood flashes before his eyes and Dean's stomach lurches once more. The needle's already on empty, he gags a couple of times before things settle inside. He knows by this point he needs to eat or at least drink something; he's exhausted, numb, and knows he's got to be dehydrated. He also knows Sam is going to have a field day as soon as he opens the door.

Dean fills a plastic cup from the tap and drinks it slowly, both for the benefit of his unsteady stomach and to delay the inevitable interrogation waiting for him on the other side of the bathroom door. He takes his time getting dressed, refills the cup, and heads out into battle.

Sam waits until Dean is sitting on his bed, tying his laces. "You gonna tell me who Bela Talbot is?"

Even though he knows it's coming, Dean's jaw clenches. "I told you last night – "

"That she was nobody, yeah, I remember. So what, you just pulled a name out of your head? Made it up?"

Dean frowns and swallows, doesn't look up. Sam's concerned, Dean knows, and that's why he has to make sure Sam has no reason to be. "Don't worry about it." Doesn't call him 'Sam.' He's still not sure about that part.

Sam sighs. Not impatient, just resigned. "How are you feeling?"

Dean takes a moment, then shrugs. Sam accepts this response as Typical Dean but Dean knows it's different. He's not blowing Sam off, but honestly _doesn't know._ Sam would kill to know what's going on in Dean's head, what he experienced last night. Dean knows that, too. He just can't give Sam what he wants right now.

* * *

After the shock of the situation wears off, Dean is as good as mute.

It's as though he's in a catatonic state and it's really freaking Sam out. He sits on the opposite side of the room from Sam, staring blankly out of the window or at his hands, thinking about God knows what. Sam wishes he knew what. Anything to help his brother because he's clearly in need of it, whether he'll admit it or not. And Sam knows it's more likely to be not.

It's almost one in the afternoon of the next day, and Sam's given up trying to get Dean to talk to him. Dean's obviously got a lot to work through in his head before he can even think of letting Sam in on it. He assumes a djinn does something to make the victim's perception of the passage of time go wonky, because Dean had only been gone that one night. Nine hours, tops, if the thing got him right after that last phone call. Dean's way too freaked out to have only been out of it nine hours.

Sam does what he can. He makes sure there is always something to eat or drink within arm's reach, though Dean very rarely takes advantage. The few times he's looked up, he's seemed confused, both by his surroundings and by Sam himself. Won't even look him in the eyes.

He's seen this behavior in Dean before, just not quite on this scale. He'll simply shut down, becoming virtually unresponsive, until he gets everything straight in his head. It was how he coped when Dad died.

That first week had been hard, understandably, for both of them. Though Sam hadn't always been on board, Dean got through by hunting, anything and everything he could find. He gets it in his head that maybe all Dean needs is a good hunt to snap him out of this.

Sam doesn't want to leave Dean alone in the room, even if that's clearly what Dean wants, so he puts up with the motel's shitty internet connection to scan through local obituaries and police reports. It takes nearly three minutes for each new page to load, and he spends those minutes watching his brother. He's recently made a lunch run, and Dean's bacon cheeseburger with extra onions sits next to him on the table between the beds, missing only two bites' worth. Sam had better luck with the chocolate milkshake; Dean's been absently sucking at the straw as he stares at the television. He knows Dean's not watching because it's a soap opera. The TV's been on the same channel all day but Sam doesn't change it because he doesn't mind the background noise and he's not really listening anyway.

Dean looks better than he did last night, though that's not saying much. He looks exhausted.

Sam props one hand on his leg and the other on the lid of his laptop. He's going for casual, but feels stiff. "Okay, stupid question time. How are you doing?"

Dean shakes his head and sets his cup aside. Sam knows he won't touch it again. "Not yet."

Sam pushes a sweaty thumbprint into his computer screen. "I'm just asking how you're feeling."

"Yeah, well, I don't really know yet."

"You need anything?"

Another shake of the head. Sam doesn't get another word out of him all day.

* * *

Now that he thinks about it, telling Sam about a world with Mom and Jess and mowing the lawn and the BEST SANDWICH EVER had been easy. It hadn't actually happened, but it sure had to be easier than this. How is he supposed to tell him about blood and death and deals and Hell and demons and angels and make Sam understand he has no fucking clue how that thing could have thought it was what he wanted? Then again, Dean's not even sure if HE knew what he wanted.

He'd wanted out of that world, a world where Mom was alive and Sam had Jessica but accepted one where he DIED and tortured souls in Hell and Sam was sucking on demon blood like it was candy.

Angels? Sure. Some psychic guy making money selling fiction novels based on visions he had of their lives? Why not.

The whole situation is bringing Fucked Up to an entirely new level.

Sam doesn't understand. He thinks Dean should be over this by now. It's obvious, with all the looks and the food and the wanting to talk. He can't grasp Hell and back and Hell again. This has to be Hell, the REAL Hell, because this is a brand new kind of torture.

The physical stuff he can handle, always has been able to. He just finds something else to occupy his mind. This torture IS his mind: two memories warring for his attention. It's not like waking up and remembering a bad dream; he honestly can't filter through the images and separate them accurately.

Across the room, Sam shifts in his chair and coughs, one of the things he's been doing to make sure Dean knows he's there. Like he would leave Dean alone. He ignores it. He realizes he's been thinking of his brother as two separate entities: _this _Sam and _that _Sam. He's wary of _this _Sam because he's been lied to by _that _Sam.

This Sam isn't helping as much as he thinks he is. He's just so damn hover-y. When he isn't hanging over Dean's shoulder or trying to shove food down his throat he's staring at him from across the room, even now.

Dean kind of wishes Sam would just GO somewhere that's away. It feels unfamiliar, this hovering. But at the same time, kind of comforting. And also, really irritating. It's nice to KNOW Sam's there, Dean just kind of wishes he wasn't. He's just so damn CONFUSED.

And then he's back to the wish thing.

Dean sighs and across the room, Sam jumps.

* * *

It happens slowly, but Sam's getting brave.

"What do you…Can I ask?"

Dean swallows and his right eyebrow jumps. He leans heavily against the backboard. "You can ask."

"What happened, Dean? What did the djinn show you?"

_God. _Sam's practically drooling. "I'm not sure it works that way."

Sam's eyebrows are a question mark and Dean elaborates, though he'd really rather let the subject drop. "I think you make it up yourself, what you see. The djinn just keeps you under."

"You sure?"

"No," Dean snaps. "That's why I said 'I think.'"

Truth is, Dean doesn't think there's any way the djinn could have possibly put all of that in his head and gotten everything right, down to the hot girl kicking his ass.

Down to the fear Sam isn't so much his innocent baby brother anymore.

Sam keeps pushing.

"Then why won't you tell me what you saw?"

"Because it's not important."

"You keep saying that."

"Yeah, and I keep meaning it."

It's the most Dean's spoken to him in two days and, thankfully, Sam takes it. He shuts up and orders some pizza.

* * *

It starts small. The third morning after Sam rescues him, Dean comes out of the bathroom strapping his watch to his wrist. "Think I might walk down to the gas station for coffee. You want?"

Sam glances down at the paper cup in his hand, still steaming from when he poured from the single-serving pot in the room only a few minutes earlier. "Sure."

Dean nods and leaves the room.

* * *

It's been almost two hours and Sam's been pacing since he discovered Dean had left his cell phone behind. Ever since they first took off looking for Dad something inside of him is always scared Dean won't come back every time he goes out, and it feels sort of like a guilty conscience. The door opens and he pounces. "I thought you said you were going for coffee?"

Dean blinks, looks down at his empty hands. "Forgot," he mumbles. "Went for a walk. Needed to clear my head."

"Did it work?"

Dean stares a long moment, then shrugs.

"Dean, man." Sam runs a hand through his hair and sinks onto the edge of his bed. "You're kinda starting to scare me, here. What's going on? What happened to you?"

"I forgot the coffee. Calm down, Priscilla, it's not the end of the world."

Sam's eyebrows jump. "That's the most normal you've been in four days."

Dean doesn't seem to hear him. He looks like he's trying to figure something out, then senses Sam staring him down. "Think I'll go for another walk." He shuts the door and is gone for the rest of the day.

* * *

It takes five days for him to tell Sam anything, and when he does, Dean doesn't pull his punches.

"He rose."

Sam's head whips up so fast, he winces. It's a knife to Dean's heart because he reads _DAD_ all over Sam's face. "Excuse me?"

"Lucifer. The devil. He rose from Hell."

"What are you – "

"You wanted me to talk about it, and I'm talking about it."

"I know. You just, you've never really…I wasn't expecting you to actually…WHAT?"

"Stop looking at me like that," Dean says without looking up from his hands.

"I'm not looking at you like anything," Sam responds to the alarm clock. Enough time goes by for Dean sing all of "Ace of Spades" in his head.

"The devil?"

"In the flesh." Dean frowns. "I think so, at least. Didn't really get to see. You kind of snapped me out of it before I got a good look."

"I thought the djinn granted wishes. Why in the hell would you wish that the devil rose from, well, Hell?"

"Of course I wouldn't wish for that, Sam. God!"

"Well, what, then?"

Dean runs a hand over his face. He doesn't even know where to begin. "I wished that Mom had never died, and that's how it started. I guess I started to figure out what was really going on, that it wasn't real, and the djinn picked up that my wish was to get away from it."

"So," Sam prods.

"So," Dean stands and starts to pace the length of the room. "So, you showed up, we killed the son of a bitch, and things just…went on from there."

"We killed the yellow-eyed demon?"

"_I _killed the yellow-eyed demon," Dean corrects.

"What do you want to do?"

Dean shrugs, feeling utterly lost. He really wishes Dad was here. _STOP IT. _He knows then he's never again going to throw that word around so carelessly. "I don't know if we should try to avoid what I saw or just ignore it completely. Figure the djinn was just screwing with me. Or treat it like it really was just a bad dream."

"Wait a minute." Sam squints. "What you SAW?"

Dean waves a hand. "Not like that. Not like you used to."

"Used to?"

Dean frowns then rubs his forehead. "Sorry. Having a hard time keeping things straight up here."

Sam blinks. "Well…was there anything else?"

Dean laughs, but it's without humor. "Oh, there's a lot else."

Sam looks like a kicked puppy, so Dean gives him what he wants, and Sam's now as silent as Dean has been all these days. His mouth opens and closes like a fish gulping for oxygen. "Wh…"

Dean raises his eyebrows. "That about sums it up."

"Wh – " Sam tries again. "I was sucking on demon blood?"

Dean shrugs.

Sam runs a hand over his face. "I don't know if I should be worried or insulted."

"Honestly, I think I'd prefer the second one."

"Well, I gotta tell you, that's the one I'm leaning toward…why's that?"

Dean swallows. "Because then I'd know there's no chance it's going to happen."

"Well, it's not. Trust me." Sam's eyes are wide with the horror of imagining the possibility of what Dean had experienced coming true. Dean takes that as a good sign.

"I'd have to say the only good to come from anything you saw was we got rid of the yellow-eyed demon." Dean cocks his head. "_You _got rid of the yellow-eyed demon," Sam amends.

"Eh," Dean says. 'You were gettin' some," he offers.

"Yeah, from a demon." The horrified look in Sam's eyes grows, and Dean cracks a smile for the first time in over a week.

"Don't say it like that, " he says seriously.

"Say what like what?"

"You said anything I _saw._ It was more than just seeing something, Sam. I was living it. It was life. Two years' worth." Plus the whole forty years in HELL thing, but Dean doesn't feel that's EVER going to need to be brought up.

Sam sits back with an awed expression and rubs a hand over his face. "Wow, Dean. That's gotta be…"

"Yeah," Dean agrees quietly.

"I'm glad you told me."

Dean nods. Now that he's gotten some of it out, it sounds just as ridiculous as he knows it should. He also know what he has to do to get through this: he just has to make the effort to pick out what's real, what he wants to keep, and everything else will slowly fade away like the nightmare it was.

* * *

Sam doesn't know how to process what Dean has told him. The fundamentals he can make sense of; deepest desires and warped realities and time and space. What he's having trouble grasping is the idea that Dean thinks he lived out a full two years in the nine hours after Sam last spoke to him.

He starts to think in terms of science fiction television. Is it part of the djinn's magic that makes you experience time at a different rate, or does it actually…transport you into another reality based upon your wish?

Sam's a smart kid. Dean's given him a bone to chew on, but he knows there's more that Dean isn't telling him.

For one, Dean's been having some pretty wicked nightmares; bad enough that he's been muttering in his sleep. Hellhounds, almost every night. Sam's not an idiot. He knows Dean hasn't told him everything about those "two years" he went through, and he can think of only one reason hellhounds would be after Dean.

He gets the balls to ask one night in a hole-in-the-wall bar, a few beers in. "Tom Sawyer" is playing in the background, mixed with conversation, laughter, and the crack of cues of pool balls. "What did you make a deal for?"

Dean nearly chokes on his beer. "What?"

"Come on, Dean. You've been…" Sam shifts on his stool. Any one of the words he's about to say has the potential to shut Dean down completely.

"I've been what?"

"Talking in your sleep."

"I have not."

"You have, too." Sam leans forward and lowers his voice. "Hellhounds, Dean. You've been dreaming about hellhounds."

A strange look comes over Dean's face; there's recognition and pain. His eyes shift away from Sam to the ring left by his bottle on the table top. He recovers in record time, eyes bright and grin wide. "Not unless you call Heidi Klum and Adriana Lima hellhounds."

"Dean – "

"You got me. I made a deal to find out Victoria's secret."

"Cut the crap, Dean."

"Let it go, Sam." The grin is gone. Dean's eyes are dark.

"Why?"

"Because it wasn't real. It didn't happen. And believe me, it's not going to." Dean's tone is so harsh, Sam believes him. He doesn't bring it up again.

In the end, they don't find the demon. The demon finds them.


End file.
